The acclaimed creator of Dark Horse Leonide The Vampyr: Miracle at the Crow's Head will be released in early October, just in time for Halloween. The legendary Hellboy creator will be ed by rising star Rachele Aragno, the first in a series of planned collaborations, in a full-color, spooky one-shot featuring a new world and characters whose life has been turned upside down by the arrival of a young vampire.
Mike Mignola's signature style was strengthened by his work with DC and Marvel but he found his true calling through his legendary character Hellboy, his work spanning multiple titles, characters, and eventually its own nickname as the "Mignolaverse." No stranger to collaborations outside of Hellboy and the later Outerverse, this latest project appears to have more in common with other Mignola stories like The Amazing Screw-On Head or Mr. Higgins Comes Home. Aragno herself has been keeping busy, following her work as one of the collaborators in Skottie Young's continuation of his iconic I Hate Fairyland series, her two graphic novels Melvino in 2019 through Bao Publishing and Mel the Chosen in 2021 through Random House Graphics
Now, Mignola and Aragno are teaming up for Leonide the Vampyr: Miracle at Crow's Head. The book will be written by Mike Mignola, drawn by Rachele Aragno, colored by the award-winning Dave Stewart, and lettered by Clem Robins with a main cover by Aragno and Stewart and a variant cover by Mignola and Stewart. The comic's official press release from Dark Horse says the comic will tell the story of a small, coastal village full of people who live simple and fairly uneventful lives. This changes forever once a shipwreck containing a small coffin and its even smaller inhabitant is found. What is originally considered a miracle quickly becomes a horrifying ordeal for the village and all of its living residents. Below is the post from Rachele's Instagram that likely inspired the story:
According to Mignola, who has been posting his work on social media in between the multiple projects he involves himself with, the collaboration spun out of a conversation that started when Mignola had noticed Rachele's artwork, specifically a portrait of a young vampire girl. " From there we started talking about the idea of a collaboration between us, said Aragno, and my vampire portrait could be the basis of a story. When Mike sent me the outline, I went crazy with joy." Having contributed to a variant cover for an issue of Young Hellboy: The Hidden Land, Mignola himself had nothing but praise for his latest collaborator, stating that he immediately fell in love with her drawings. "Sometimes you just look at a character and you know their stories. That's pretty much what happened here. Almost no effort went into it- I just looked into her spooky little eyes and the stories came spilling out."
Regardless of the fate of Leonide and the village she finds herself within, the tale of Leonide certainly seems like an exciting one. Mike Mignola's industry experience and Rachelle Aragno's rising-star combine to make Leonide the Vampyr: Miracle at the Crow's Head a comic that fans of Dark Horse and Hellboy won't want to miss!
Leonide The Vampyr: Miracle at the Crow's Head will be released October 5th, 2022
